Known for its clear narrative voice and impeccable scholarship, Alan Brinkley's best-selling survey text invites students to think critically about the many forces that continually create the Unfinished Nation that is the United States. In a concise but wide-ranging narrative, Brinkley shows the diversity and complexity of the nation and our understanding of its history--one that continues to evolve both in the events of the present and in our reexamination of new evidence and perspectives on the past. This edition features a series of Patterns of Popular Culture essays, as well as expanded coverage of pre-Columbian America, new America in the World essays, and updated coverage of recent events and developments that demonstrates how a new generation continues to shape the American story.
Connect History, an easy-to-use learning platform that gives instructors access to engaging assignable and assessable tools, such as primary sources and interactive maps – all of which are tied to learning objectives – that support student success and help bring history to life for students. 
·         Interactive Maps, assignable through Connect and tied to assessment, encourage students’ geographical and historical thinking by demonstrating things like changing boundaries and migration routes, war battles and election results. 
·         Primary Sources, Connect History’s Image Bank allows users easy and quick access to hundreds of additional primary sources which can be downloaded and incorporated into lectures or assessment materials. The Primary Source Primer is a brief, illustrated video tutorial on how to read and analyze a primary source. As students watch, they are prompted at various points in order to confirm understanding. 
·         Critical Missions, immerse students as active participants in a series of transformative moments in history. As advisors to key historical figures, they read and analyze sources, interpret maps and timelines, and write recommendations for what do to in a historically critical moment. Later, students learn to think like a historian, conducting a retrospective analysis from a contemporary perspective. 
·         SmartBook, makes study time as productive and efficient as possible. It identifies and closes knowledge gaps through a continually adapting reading experience that provides personalized learning resources at the precise moment of need. This ensures that every minute spent with SmartBook is returned to the student as the most value-added minute possible. The result? More confidence, better grades, and greater success. 
• Access to your instructor’s homework assignments, quizzes, syllabus, notes, reminders, and other important files for the course.
• Progress dashboards that quickly show how you are performing on your assignments and tips for improvement.
• The option to purchase (for a small fee) a print version of the book. This binder-ready, loose-leaf version includes free shipping.
Complete system requirements to use Connect can be found here: http://www.mheducation.com/highered/platforms/connect/training-support-students.html
 
In addition to being a best selling textbook author, ALAN BRINKLEY is the Allan Nevins Professor of History and former Provost at Columbia University. He is the author of Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression, which won the 1983 National Book Award; The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War; and Liberalism and its Discontents. His most recent books are "John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961-1963" and "The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century" both published recently. He was educated at Princeton and Harvard and taught previously at MIT, Harvard, and the City University Graduate School before joining the Columbia faculty In 1991. In 1998-1999, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He won the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Award at Harvard in 1987 and the Great Teacher Award at Columbia in 2003. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the board of trustees of the National Humanities Center and Oxford University Press, and chairman of the board of trustees of the Century Foundation. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and the University of Torino (Italy). He was the 1998-1999 Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.
